Review: A Riotous 'Avenue Q' at Theatre Three

Yes, the puppets are naughty. Yes, it’s an adult spoof of Sesame Street. But why Avenue Q works so well – and works so well in Theatre 3’s basement space – is about more than just goggle eyes and gay jokes.

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Michael Robinson and James Chandler as Nicky and Denise Lee as Gary Coleman in Avenue Q

The success of Avenue Q at Theatre Three is not just about the raunchy puppets.

No, really.

Though the raunchy puppets are pretty funny.

On Broadway in 2004, Avenue Q beat Wicked to win the best musical Tony Award, a case of the small-budget, decidedly-non-family-friendly show winning over the big-budget, family-friendly blockbuster. Needless to say, that was a surprise. Many of the Tony voters are out here in Flyover Country — they’re the touring presenters. Which is why the shows that win the best musical award are often the ones the Middle America venues hope will tour well: big, flashy, family-friendly shows. Which Avenue Q — as kind of South Park Moves in with Bert and Ernie and Really Starts to Party — definitely isn’t.

So why did it win? I’ll get to that. Considering the show’s irreverent nature, presenting Avenue Q in Theatre Too’s basement space actually suits its sensibility and scale more than a grand, Broadway touring house like the Winspear did. I mean, it’s a puppet show, a grandchild of Punch and Judy.It has an irreverent, mocking humor that sends up childhood icons. Of course, it’d fit a space so intimate everything is essentially ‘in your face,’ a space that feels like a cleaner version of an off-off-Broadway cellar-theater.

But that doesn’t mean compressing the musical into Theatre Too isn’t an achievement.

Avenue Q is something of a Generation X rom-com dressed up as a Sesame Street send-up. Young Princeton has his freshly useless B.A. in English and comes to the city looking for work. He settles in an apartment in an affordable neighborhood (translation: gritty, urban, racially mixed), but it’s one that still has friendly people, including the teacher’s assistant Kate Monster and a no-longer-so-famous Gary Coleman (yes, the late TV actor, played by Denise Lee) who’s the apartment building’s super. What follows are the dating-and-getting-wasted scene, the finding-an-awful-job scene, the in-the-closet roomie scene and the advocacy-of-internet-porn scene.

You get the picture. It’s another Jonah Hill/Seth Rogen R-rated comedy in which a young man tries to find his purpose and/or true love, but this particular movie has brighter colors and characters who have only four fingers.

Along the way, creators Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx do a terrific job of spoofing children’s-television-style songs while crafting just straight-ahead, naughty r&b (You Can Be As Loud as the Hell You Want (When You’re Makin’ Love)and a sob-sister ballad (There’s a Fine, Fine Line). But it’s the essential staging technique of their show — beyond using kids’ puppets to tell an adult story — that’s a stroke of genius: They make the puppeteers part of the action.

Thus, most of the puppet characters have a double focus. We see the grinning, goggle-eyed piece of felt being manipulated, and we see the grinning, not-so-goggle-eyed person who’s manipulating it and voicing it. It’s an obvious enough notion — like ‘violating the fourth wall’ — but it produces this fresh, heightened effect. Each puppet becomes a kind of mini-chorus, its emotions and energy boosted by this chiming human face right next to it. Puppets are like cartoons — they’re about energy and motion and color — and the human participants amp up the energy while, yes, adding a touch of the semi-human.

And that, I maintain, is why audiences — whether they know it or not — get such a kick out of Avenue Q.

OK, yes. The puppet sex does play a part in that, too.

Though this technique may look like child’s play — goofing around with funny voices and exaggerated expressions — several puppeteers handle and voice multiple characters. Which means director Michael Serrecchia had to work out a choreographed (and tightly spaced) ‘dance of the drunken puppets.’ And I don’t think scene designer Jac Alder’s achievement has been fully appreciated: He collapsed what was, in effect, a two-and-a-half-story-tall set into Theatre Too’s low-ceilinged dimensions — while keeping all of the doors, windows, fold-out and pop-up sections intact. The set becomes its own jac-in-the-box entertainment.

Add puppeteer Michael Robinson’s three dozen creations and several high-energy performances by Lee and the perfectly Bert-voiced James Chandler, and Theatre Too has a funny, bawdy, little show that’s likely to goggle its eyes, wave its arms and run for a long while.

Jerome Weeks is the Senior Arts Reporter/Producer for KERA. Previously at The Dallas Morning News, he was the book columnist for 10 years and the drama critic for 10 years before that. His writing has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, American Theatre and Men’s Vogue magazines. View more about Jerome Weeks.